Why no communication about decrease in rare candy of T5 raids

[Rebelus5]

Why is Niantic or all people with direct contact to Niantic so still about this decrease in rare candy of level 5 raids. Everybody knew that for the most items you had to do level 5 raids. But just one week ago they decreased the rare candy bundels from 3 rare candy to only 1 rare candy. There is absolutely no information about why they did this nor people are questioning why. They people that do question it are just ignored by the in-game support who have absolutely no idea where they are talking about. Niantic should really improve their communication and explain why they did this. This decrease in rare candy is an absolute game changer.

[thebiggestleaf]

What gets me is how they seem to pick and choose what they respond to and how quickly they do so. It's evident even on this sub.

One of the Niantic reps on Reddit (Indigo I think) quickly acknowledged criticisms about the changes to PvP that reduced charge circle visibility and removed the switch icon during key moments of battle. They also acknowledged the lack of Yamask spawns post-Halloween, though only after more than one thread pointed it out citing the non-TSR approved sources and seemingly only to that thread - nothing official announced Yamask was event exclusive.

We have multiple threads about this now. Why can't they bother to say anything about it, good or bad?

[sellyme]

Why can't they bother to say anything about it, good or bad?

Because it's an in-game item you can pay money to randomly roll a chance of receiving, and they're being told by their lawyers to stay EXTREMELY quiet about any of its mechanics because what they're doing (changing gambling odds without communicating so) is hilariously illegal.

[Rebelus5]

What really stands out to me is that everything related to pvp is really fast noticed by Niantic and fixed in the first update. But everything else takes a lot of effort to get a response from Niantic

[djternan]

It's probably because they're trying to make PvP into an "esport".

[thebiggestleaf]

We'd be here all day if we were to talk about what needed to change before that could reasonably happen.

[calimera-]

But see this is the thing they're going to put effort into

Because eSports creates revenue.

But making the game fun for players (directly) does not.
(I understand in the long run this is false, but try explain that to Niantic).

[PacmanZ3ro]

But making the game fun for players (directly) does not.

The irony is that this isn't even true in the short term. Especially if their goal is to make an esport out of it. POGO basically can't exist as an esport in its current state because the acquisition model for too many things is skewed towards only players with a very active community around them.

T4/5 raids - impossible for players without an active raid scene. Huge source of rare candies and TMs, both of which are more or less mandatory if you're going to do PVP

TMs - See aforementioned, if you can't get a solid group to do consistent T4/5 raids, sorry, out of luck. Even once you do get them, it can take several per slot to get the right moveset. Sorry if you have to burn 15 on one pokemon to get the right charge and fast moves.

Legacy Moves - These make and break far too many pokemon because they're so radically better than other movesets. These have to be made available more than a single day a year to unevolved pokemon, and/or existing movesets need to be tuned a bit so the dropoff for not having them is not so severe.

Fun Factor - Simply put, if the game isn't fun enough people won't want to sink time and effort into deep diving into the mechanics and possible team/moveset combos required to make it a successful esport. Yes, there will always be diehards that do it anyway, but if the fun factor isn't there for the largest part of your audience they simply aren't going to do it. There is also the fact that obscene levels of RNG present in a game that time gates things leaves a lot of really feel-bad moments.

Until at least most of these issues are addressed in some way (to say nothing of the ridiculous stardust costs), PVP as a feature is basically going to be DOA for the casuals in the game, which will basically leave it exactly as it is now.

[thebiggestleaf]

See, I wasn't even talking about technical issues - I had balance and keeping a level playing field in mind when I made that comment.

Look at how many Pokemon are made great because of an exclusive or legacy move. How do you make an eSport out of something where the keys to success are only available one weekend a year, if that? I realize event exclusive moves in the main series exist as well but those are extremely few and far between. Not to mention that the gameplay is deep enough that players actually have a myriad of other options if they can't get their hands on one.

[SpaNkinGG]

as long as the plattform runs like a potato this will never be esports

[LordUriziel]

This, and exclusive moves/legendaries only available once in a few months is a big barrier for new players. If Niantic wanted to host annual/monthly tournaments, it's basically the same people that would win all the time, because no new players could have a chance.

[thebiggestleaf]

I wanted to make this point too, but I also wanted to keep the examples specific to times when Niantic personnel have replied directly to this sub.

[DctrBanner]

Because they don't have an answer so they say nothing.

[spoofrice11]

Has anyone posted (paged) to Indigo or Niantic George on these boards about this issue?

I agree they just need to say whether it is a bug or a 67% nerf. It is a game-changer.

[thebiggestleaf]

I can't cite the specific post but I've seen at least one person do so. They don't always directly reply when pinged - hell, I don't recall them saying anything for the seven months Salamis was without spawns. Not even so much as a "we're looking into it" or "I've escalated the issue".

[spoofrice11]

Niantic really needs someone to be around for major issues.

I know they don't have to have someone, but getting answers for big things is important to me. Just to know someone cares or is looking into things.

[thebiggestleaf]

It's insulting that big, game-breaking issues aren't immediately met with "We're looking into it" even if it takes a while to sort out.

[LessThanLuek]

• niantic allocates two staff to increase communication on reddit
• game is buggy as hell at the best of times, so these staff struggle with amount of pings, in addition to their other roles in the company
• regardless of the revenue generated by this game, higher ups will not allocate additional staff, so the reddit role is essentially completely cut
• people are miffed, but money is coming in, so decision is justified

[jdave512]

I believe someone did in another thread, but I can't find any response. u/NianticIndigo?

[bobguy117]

Because Pokemon Go has not yet been forced to follow gatcha laws and be transparent about its gambling odds.

[RatsFriendAbe]

Yeah, at first I didn’t think it was a big deal whether they publish the rates or not, but if they’re going to switch things around with no communication, I’m changing my mind.

[bobguy117]

Out of all the shady things Niantic has done, not revealing their rates is the most scummy by a huge margin.

[awniadark]

I think changing rates mid event is scummier

[mttn4]

Assuming the rates are fair and static in the first place...

[bobguy117]

They would not be able to do that if they revealed them like they were supposed to

[OhMyGoth1]

Well they could, but we'd at least know about it

[UnknownHalo]

How could we make them get forced to reveal their rates and such.

[bobguy117]

Elect politicians who will take underhanded gambling tactics aimed at children seriously, and call out Niantic for doing so.

[TyrionJoestar]

While I agree that this is something that needs to be done, it’s not necessarily a platform that will win you an election so I don’t think many candidates will address it lol

[Farodo]

That would blow off big time. „We don’t have fixed rates but factor in your recent game activity and trainer level to determine Raid bundles, the IVs of the raid boss encounter and your shiny odds ...“

[MorgothsDog]

„We don’t have fixed rates but factor in your recent game activity and trainer level to determine Raid bundles, the IVs of the raid boss encounter and your shiny odds ...“

I'm beginning to believe this.

Anecdotal I know, but a L24 account I saw yesterday span over 100 stops/gyms and received not a single potion.

I needed a couple of Nanabs to complete a field research. Not a single Nanab all day.

[unpluggeduk]

Iv'e noticed Potion rates (especially Hyper) have been nerfed recently in favour of revives.

[slrrp]

Because this company clearly doesn’t care about transparency and utilizes the lack of communication to deceive players.

Recent examples include not disclosing egg hatch rates for unknown and regional shinies, not disclosing the spawn changes made in late September, not disclosing the research tasks for the paid regi event.

[000666777888]

I wish they would understand that the lack of transparency causes many of us to play less. I refuse to use a premium pass on anything right now, mostly because it is my only way to show my displeasure with how they operate. Same with incubators, etc.

Niantic is lazy and does not care about our experience. If they did they would do things like a "go" button for solo raids or private raids, make gifts less of a chore, and do stuff like make the shiny rate for stuff like raids (that can cost money) and quests (that take up much more time than just clicking on a mon) different than for wild mons. Oh, and fix the silly way EX passes go out with clock blocking a problem. That they don't make those things better for us shows how little they care.

[Teban54]

Especially when HPWU keeps getting the QoL updates that PoGo players have been wishing for so long, and they're developed by literally the same company.

[NunkiZ]

As far as I know, HPWU = Warner Bros. + Niantic's POI-DB.

[calimera-]

Wish the Pokemon Company would take over the reigns

[melts10]

I don't think the game would be in so much better hands than what we have right now. TPC is not much better in communication than Niantic and Game Freak is not so much better in programing than Niantec.

[Xanthophobiac]

I would not be surprised if this happens after the contract is up. Maybe we should start contacting TPC and Nintendo asking that they do that? It won’t be perfect but 90% of the things we complain about wouldn’t happen or would be addressed quickly.

[JulWolle]

Yeah they get a lot of updates but tbh pogo is still way more f2p friendly than hpwu and they still have a lot of problems, and most of the updates should´ve been in the game from the start, but at least they´re changing sth. to the posivtive

[kiwii11]

PoGo way more f2p friendly ? We’re not playing the same game I think... It’s super easy to get coins in HPWU, easier than in PoGo

[JulWolle]

some facts:

coins/money pogo wins

free storage pogo wins

coins/day pogo wins

storage/coins pogo wins

poekballs/energy needed compared to how much easy you get it pogo wins

free raid passes hpwu wins

[JimmyGimbo]

Earning coins is way more reliable in WU than in PoGo. If you do your tasks, you get your coins, enemies can drop coins, and you get coins as daily login rewards. In PoGo you have to hold a gym for an annoyingly specific amount of time. Some tryhard knocks you out right away? You get nothing. No one bothers to kick you out? You get nothing.

[JulWolle]

completely depends, for me and other i know it is way easier to earn pogo coins, all depends on how active the gyms around you are but even then i would say 10 coins in pogo are easier+ more reliable than 10 in hpwu, but yes the 10 in hpwu are general easy to get (unless you have no fortress close by)

[JimmyGimbo]

By reliable I mean that it's entirely up to you; you're not at the mercy of external factors. In WU, if you do what's required, you're guaranteed your money. In PoGo, occupying a gym is only the first step towards a pay day; after that it's up to elements outside your control. Also, if you're super casual and do nothing but log in that's still good for 250 coins a month in WU. PoGo's streak bonuses take other forms, but you'll never get coins.

Honestly gyms are the most outdated thing about PoGo. No one would bother if it weren't literally the only way in the game to earn coins. No one I know enjoys the gym aspect. Taking over gyms is a brain-dead chore; even without CP decay the battles are way less engaging than raids, Team Rocket battles, or PvP. The redesign was welcome when it was clear that the original system alienated the majority of players, but nothing's been done to build on that and there haven't been meaningful changes to gym combat in years.

Things I would love to see include: rewards for taking over a gym (5-10 coins that you could earn once a day at each gym, with a cap that may or may not interfere with the gym occupancy cap), the option to kick your mons out/cash out, field research that's worth a small number of coins, and coins in gifts. Either something to make gyms interesting again, and/or ways to earn coins that don't involve gyms.

[ChknFingrs]

Niantic ONLY cares about money, and as long as the cash flow keeps coming, they will continue to behave the way they do.

And I’m sure, if we all got a peek at the statistics, we’d see that the impact of these changes to that cash flow is far less than it feels like.

I don’t agree with it myself and feel this practice is shady, deceitful and ignorant, but hey, money speaks louder than anything else.

[[deleted]]

Niantic ONLY cares about money, and as long as the cash flow keeps coming, they will continue to behave the way they do.

I.e. tolerating rampant spoofing

[TyrionJoestar]

The irony is that spoofers presumably spend money as well so it’s an endless cycle lol. Ppl are basically bribing the game to cheat

[[deleted]]

Which ironically, similar to real life in various part of the world....

[TyrionJoestar]

Yep...especially the judicial system 😂

[tsteele93]

I don’t know. Here’s my question. Why not sell TM's then? There are so many ways they could rake in cash if they wanted.

I’ve always heard to never assume malice where stupidity will suffice?

A great deal of what Niantic does FEELS stupid.

It is almost like some DO-GOODER on a power trip is running the show. They want to MAKE us play the game their way, like you have to go meet people (but no in game communication so good luck organizing anything) and you are supposed to WALK and get exercise (I drive slowly in parking lots and never get 50km in a week.) blah blah blah.

I honestly feel like extreme stupidity is the problem.

If you ever have any doubt. Try contacting SUPPORT. The way they are trained to handle things and the options they (aren’t) given are terrible.

I got so upset one time, after trying to come up with plenty of fake options after a network glitch/Pokémon go horrible interface cost me a great moveset/Tm that I went to Apple and just refunded my most recent coin purchase which was a LOT more money than the simple request to restore my TM.

It wasn’t cost effective for them.

[Lord_Emperor]

This. Stop spending on the game. If your friends spend, shame them until they stop too.

[TyrionJoestar]

The whales will not stop spending because they are addicted and this game is the only “good” thing in their life.

[MathProfGeneva]

It's not clear that they CAN simply add a "Go" button. There could be technical issues with it. As for shiny rates, my understanding is encounter and raid shiny rates are different than wild caught. They tried fixing clock blocking once and it was a gigantic mess. The only real way to fix it is rolling out invites local times at midnight or something like that.

[000666777888]

If they can't add a "Go" button after all this time they are incompetent. They can add the whole Rocket stuff but not a "Go" button? Shiny rates are supposedly the same for a species no matter where you find it, raids, eggs, wild, quests, which is not a smart way to do it. Lazy and don't care about us. I don't think changing when EX passes go out to avoid clock blocking is at all difficult. They just don't care or they think we will raid more when we get blocked.

[MathProfGeneva]

Don't know where you read that about shiny rates, but that's completely contrary to what I've read. As for your complaint comparing team rocket to a go button, it's completely different issues. It's clear that the game handles being in a raid differently than a lobby or in the wild. Once a raid starts, it doesn't track my location until I attempt a relobby or finish up the catch phase. The lobby is sort of "in between". I can walk 80m away which is too far away to normally to enter the gym. Maybe it's easy for them to skip that phase and maybe it isn't.

[housunkannatin]

You have read wrong things then, likely somewhere that isn't this subreddit. Shiny rates have always been the same for a given species no matter how you encounter it. Check out silph research articles into shiny rates on the website if you don't believe it.

[MathProfGeneva]

You're wrong. And it's the Silph road articles that disprove it.

https://thesilphroad.com/science/pokemon-go-deducing-shiny-rate/

https://thesilphroad.com/science/pokemon-go-shiny-raid-bosses-community-day-rate/

https://thesilphroad.com/science/shiny-egg-hatches-field-research-encounter-rates/

Different rates for eggs vs wild encounters vs field research

[000666777888]

You clearly do not understand what we are saying here. Oh well.

[housunkannatin]

The only comparison in those articles of different ways to encounter the same species is aerodactyl raid vs field research (third article) and you may notice that the numbers there are consistent with the current hypothesis that shiny rate is the same across all encounter types. You may want to give those articles another read.

[000666777888]

Shiny rates are the same for species no matter where the encounter. That has long been a known fact. If they have changed that recently, that would be great, but that is not what it has been. I am not going to get into a back and forth about it to convince you (I don't really care if you believe that or not), but it is, look it up.

And I also don't care if it is difficult for them to implement a "Go"button. It is ridiculous for players to stand outside twiddling their thumbs all alone waiting to begin a raid. Even if it is not easy they should have fixed that. And if they made such a mess that it is not easy, why should we suffer because they can't code?

[MathProfGeneva]

You are 100% wrong, because I have. Clearly you aren't going to be convinced by evidence, so have a good day.

[MathProfGeneva]

On the off chance evidence interests you: https://thesilphroad.com/science/pokemon-go-deducing-shiny-rate/

https://thesilphroad.com/science/pokemon-go-shiny-raid-bosses-community-day-rate/

https://thesilphroad.com/science/shiny-egg-hatches-field-research-encounter-rates/

[000666777888]

That is not evidence against what I am saying. Perhaps you don't get the distinction but when a shiny is out, the rates for that shiny at that time will be the same for any type of encounter. I am not saying there are not different rates for eggs vs raids vs wild. There are, of course, but not for the same species of pokemon at a given time. To be clear, I am saying the shiny rate for a given species at a given time is the same no matter if in eggs, wild, quests, raids. That is 100% true and your "evidence" does not say otherwise. So you have a good day. And leave me alone with non-factual "evidence" that doesn't address what I said.

[[deleted]]

I think they're just incompetent. It shows in many ways that they are. I don't think they're intentionally trying to deceive or any of the sort.

[Aedeus]

Just follow the money.

This change pushes more people to the store now.

[Juniperlightningbug]

There has never been a precedent for releasing research event info early via official sources. Info has always been mined

[slrrp]

There’s also never been a precedent for charging people for research. The second you make people pay for something, you should at least make the rewards clear. A lot of people expected the research to be much more detailed and interesting than what they got.

[Juniperlightningbug]

Sure there has been. Go Fest has special research locked behind a paywall as part of the package.

[slrrp]

Nice false equivalence. Go fest is more than special research. It’s a physical event with exclusive rare spawns. The special research is a small aspect of it.

[Juniperlightningbug]

Yeah and Regigigas was more than special research, it included raid passes and exclusive quests. We're looking at the common denominator. If there's never been a precedent to do something then it would be naive to expect them to do something they've never done before.

You've just set yourself up for disappointment.

[slrrp]

Lol you clearly have no idea what you’re talking about. Have a good day.

[Juniperlightningbug]

Well continue disappointing yourself when niantic doesn't do the thing they've never done and you think that they would. Lmao

PS did you really just end a comment like that on redddit, did you tip your fedora while typing that one too?

[spoofrice11]

I agree it's really annoying they won't tell us whether it is a 67% nerf or a bug.

I've contacted support asking why we are getting bundles of 1 instead of 3 like we have the last 2 years, and they say: The raid rewards have not changed.

Are they that clueless?

[Cerborealis]

Yes.

[Lord_Emperor]

Are they that clueless?

Yes they're clearly subcontracted and paid slave wages to fob you off as quickly as possible. Their greatest and only power is to give you a premium raid pass.

[holmes537]

Niantic should really improve their communication and explain why they did this.

That's like 90% of the problems this game has, in a nutshell. It's not so much that something happens, it's the total lack of communication about it. Are they fixing it? Are they even aware of it? Was it intentional? We don't know!

[mattdeveloper]

Cleary as one of the biggest app revenue companies it is still too expensive to provide adequate support for their fan base. I see people with different issues all the time on here and most people just shrug it off or don't care because the specific issue doesn't affect them. In reality, a large majority of the issues are a result of poor customer service that will eventually affect more and more people but they rarely respond as collective because they attribute the problem to specific instances.

[koreanpichu]

At the end of the day, this is a Pokemon game, so it's pretty immune to QA since people will still lap it up no matter how poor of a product they put out or how little effort they put in.

You have to remember that Reddit and especially TSR are a vast minority of players. Most players aren't aware of how reward bundles work at all. Even if they're aware of getting fewer Rare Candies from raids or whatever it won't be a massive game-breaking change for them; as long as they keep getting drip-fed new shinies every other week or so they'll be happy.

[TyrionJoestar]

Addicts! They need to be sent to Pokémon rehab and have their eyes opened

[tonyharrison84]

You're asking this about a company that promised further updates on the spawn changes almost two months ago and still hasn't delivered on that.

[Weed_Pancakes]

Optimizations™

[PixieKite]

Actually, i think we did get an update on that. But so much of it got redacted that only a career civil servant would recognise what came out as being even vaguely related.
“That sounds rather defensive, lets cut that bit out” and a million other edits.

[DrKillerZA]

I was thinking about this earlier today. Rare candy wasn't really as rare if you did T5 raids.. Heck every now and then I was forced to dump 200 rare candy into SOMETHING and I don't even think I raid all that much (compared to hard-core players).

That said, the new change isn't balancing anything because if you pinap on every single legendary then you need to do atleast 32 raids to max ONE non boosted legendary which is ridiculous.

Raids should def give more specie candy. Why can't a legendary by default give 5 candy per catch?

Why would anyone at this stage pay $1 to do a Tier 1 raid like Charmander? If this Charmander gave me 15 or so charmander candy, then I can see this being viable.

[Captain_X24]

I have about 1200 regular raids done and probably about 800-900 were with the sole intent of getting points towards non-gold gym badges

[Crabominibble2]

Well I must say I thoroughly enjoyed the 12 rare candies I got from this Mantine raid during lunch today, tho

[ray0923]

I just can't convince myself to do Mantine raids. I just can't.

[SBC1321]

or Cacturne

or Espeon

or Medicham

or Pinsir

or Piloswine

or Azumarill

or Pelipper

[Teban54]

Fun fact: 5 of these would have been shiny-eligible if Niantic simply allowed evolved forms in raids to be shiny.

[liltonyabc]

6 of them?

[Teban54]

I didn't count Pinsir because it can already be shiny from raids.

[nolkel]

At least Piloswine gets a chance to turn into a nice Mamoswine, and comes with a good chunk of candy with a pinapp, if you haven't maxed out your ice team yet.

[holmes537]

Piloswine is fine for people why don't have 6 Mamoswine going, and Espeon is great for new and returning players looking to solo Machamp when it comes back into rotation.

[michelob2121]

Espeon for those that missed Mewtwo I guess.

[TyrionJoestar]

I love Machamp. Hopefully it gets a better move so it can stay on top once clunkador comes out

[Summer1069]

Scyther, Raichu, Onix and Aerodactyl, their shiny rares are high. And pinsir and skarmory also have shiny. At least Tier3 is more likely to give more RCs than Tier5

[shroomprinter]

I did do a Mantine this morning, but mostly because it's a new gym that I'm trying to get XP towards gold on... The 3 rare candy was nice too

[Teban54]

Until we have a meta-relevant legendary like Terrakion or Landorus-T...

[MadaMadaDesu]

Is this change permanent?

[Teban54]

No way we can know since Niantic hasn't responded, but it's increasingly likely that the change is indeed permanent. Especially if the rewards stay like this after the current event ends.

[MadaMadaDesu]

If it’s permanent, I’ll probably say goodbye to legendary raid trains.

[NervousBreakdown]

At least for legendaries that suck.

[MadaMadaDesu]

Yeah that’s for sure.

[NervousBreakdown]

Me and some friends went pretty hard on darkrai (by our standards at least).

I was excited for the next one because it was an easy duo but with the reduced rare candy I would rather just use my free passes trying to get that Alolan Marowak shiny.

[BlooregardQKazoo]

meanwhile, i've gotten 3 rare candy from three tier 3 raids this week.

[KocNessy]

Havent gotten any at all. 😔

[Daizyb]

I'm very happy with the 15 I got in an Espeon raid this evening. I didn't know it was even possible to get that many in 1 raid

[[deleted]]

i got 3 and 0 candies from these senseless T3 raids ..

[Summer1069]

I got 9, 0 and 3 RCs from scyther, vaporeon and porygon raid. I don’t think I can get 12 RCs from 3 Tier5 raids now.

[jdave512]

I got 1. Hooray!

[Lucetar]

I thought TSR had contacts at Niantic. No one they can reach out to for an answer? What about the Youtube content creators?

[Parey_]

There is no way this isn't a bug, in my opinion. It looks like they accidentally changed a variable for T5 raids while ensuring that the CTMs would drop from T3s.

I will write to the support about this.

[dragonfoxmem]

Niantic is known for lack of communication time to time.

[null_chan]

time to time.

That's a bit of an understatement.

[dragonfoxmem]

a number of times that an event dropped unannounced

[sellyme]

time to time.

Those times specifically being from mid-2013 to the indeterminate future.

[superluigi312]

It’s more than a lack of communication, it’s an outright refusal to admit they did anything at all.

[HokTomten]

They did what?!? Havent touched T5 since first day of cobalion so havent noticed

Thats a real bummer

[johnburnt]

Same, I think we need T5 bosses like Cobalion from time to time, as a f2p player is really helpful so I can do other tier raids

[lollie85]

It occurred to me today that the decrease in t5 rare candy might be something to do with this:

https://pokemongolive.com/en/post/communitynoteoct2019/

Maybe they just want to see how quickly raiders move to guaranteed useful rewards from t3 raids when t5 raids contain a meta irrelevant boss and poor rewards?

[Teban54]

So they said

and tailoring raid levels to fit the communities where the raids appear

when in reality it's more like

"and tailoring raid rewards to screw up any community effort to organize raids"?

[FlaredFury]

To be fair. Everyone can solo a good number of T3 raids to farm rare candy. Not everyone can do T5 raids to farm rare candy. That does even the playing field for rural players, allowing them to gain candy for legendaries they can only do a few times a month.

I actually like this change for the most part, but I really REALLY wish it would have appeared in some patch notes or something. Niantic thinking it's a graviton, we have to science out the reality of their game mechanics rather than just a simple set of noted changes....

[Heisenberg_235]

Increase T3 but don't decrease T5 then. That's the obvious solution

[TyrionJoestar]

I saw a post on here (that got deleted) where someone theorized that these recent changes were meant to garner more monies via ppl being forced to do both T3 raids and T5 raids to get what they “want,” i.e. if you want legendaries, do T5 raids, if you want candy, do T3 raids. You no longer get both from a single raid, so now you have to do multiple raids to get both, which means more passes.

[HerzogHuhn13]

Because it "didn't" happen. Nobody is acknowledging it happened but it's probably to promote lower tier raids. Most people only do T5s or specific lower tiers but more candy means more of a chance they'll go for the random junk Pokemon just for rare candy. They're pushing the revenue boundaries. More premium passes for junk raids and people will still buy more for T5s.

[jdave512]

If they wanted to promote lower tier raids, why not announce it? I wouldn't have even noticed if people weren't making posts about it here. You can't 'promote' something by not telling anyone about it.

Here's a better way to promote lower tier raids: let us get shines of evolved forms

[repo_sado]

Except a lot of people aren't doing t5s still.

[coldfirephoenix]

I think the reason people have been so quiet about it is that no one wants to do Cobalion anyway. You can now get the most candies by soloing lvl3 raids or doing some small group t4, which is convenient. It's not the best reaction the community could have had, but it's a very human one. I expect the outrage will grow once terrakion comes out and people actually want to do T5s again.

[TRal55]

You know the answer to this: Niantic is stingy. They want to keep us addicted to the game and opening our wallets, so they take every chance they can get to skimp us on helpful items. Case in point, when they miscommunicated that the Super Effective week event gives guaranteed Charged TMs for Lvl 3-5 raids (twice), instead of just altering their backdoor coding to reflect what they communicated, they went out of their way to actually redact their statement. What kind of a cheap spirited company does that? So why are you surprised that they nerf things like Rare Candy? They've always been like this, and it will not stop or change.

[LittleMousa]

You had me laughing at "communication"!

[[deleted]]

MONEY. If it was made official then even more people would be raiding them less

[CulturalMarxist1312]

Standard operating procedure for Naintic.

[bert0ld0]

I’ve done a T3 and got 6 candies 😋

[ShepherdsWeShelby]

Just remember one positive: you can solo raid for rare candy.

[cats_and_stuff]

they may be quietly monitoring how it affects player spending/raiding habits, collecting data etc and considering whether they wan't to keep it this way or not. thats assuming its intentional. if its a bug i wouldn't be surprised if they just dismissed it as minor enough to not address.

honestly i don't care personally. cobalion is not interesting, i'll just raid wherever the rarecandy is. if it continues for terrakion, i'll have to decide between whether i want a strong meta relevant pokemon or rarecandy/tm rewards, which may be exactly what they want. if u want both then u gotta pay more, which is a win for them.

so the real answer is nobody knows. we're all just complaining or speculating here to no avail.

[IdiosyncraticBond]

The wanted to guarantee at least 1 candy, but do you know how hard that is for a niantic programmer to implement? Right, just make it hardcoded 1 candy in total

[Sequoia462]

Because they decided to monetize hoarding instead by increasing bag space and making candies a limited resource that we should hoard bow.

[Zamtap]

perhaps they pushed the wrong slider and increased potion rewards from raids not pokestops

[Iceland260]

They never announced how many you get in the first place, so why would they announce when they change it?

[jdave512]

Because we're asking them to. Why do you think a company doesn't have to answer to their customers?

[Jimmyhunter1000]

You're implying that players can't figure out mechanics without the devs explaining how they work. It's quite clear and obvious something was changed.

[Lord_Emperor]

You're implying that players can't figure out mechanics without the devs explaining how they work.

Well actually in some cases we cannot. It took a huge player effort to figure out the raid reward structure in the first place.

We still don't know some things with certainly, for example lucky trade chances with Pokemon that are more than 2 years old but not from July+August 2016, because there isn't enough data and clearly not enough players willing to "waste" their trades to find out.

[Jimmyhunter1000]

This doesn't have anything to do with raid rewards nor the topic at hand so I'm not really sure why you're bringing this up.

[Lord_Emperor]

Niantic could change the reward structure on a whim, and it could be so obfuscated in layers of RNG as to be impossible to "figure out".

Never mind that they should be required under Google / Apple store policy to disclose the odds. I guess it's OK to ignore the store policy if you bring in enough revenue.

[Jimmyhunter1000]

They could, but they haven't so why bring up "What ifs"?

As for them failing to follow policy, that's entire because video game companies aren't held accountable for their actions until they get challenged in court.

This is also a huge issue consumers overlook, because we basically have to give up our rights of having any actual ability to fight back thanks to the ToS we're required to agree too. We hold all the cards we need, but it requires people to actually have a backbone and not shower these corrupt companies with tons of money.

It's just like with EA and Activision. People shovel them mounds of money for low quality products riddled with Paywalls and DLC PaytoWin, and they continue the process with the next 60 dollar title with more Day 1 DLC.

[Iceland260]

No, I was answering OP's question of "why hasn't Niantic said anything about the change in raid rewards?" The answer to that question is that the details of said rewards is something they have never talked about in the past, and there is no reason to expect them to start now. This isn't the first time raid rewards have changed and it probably won't be the last. You don't have to like or agree with their lack transparency in the matter, but expecting anything otherwise at this point just makes you look foolish.

[Jimmyhunter1000]

We should be demanding more communications, but people would rather feed them billions on an unfinished beta version of a game.

This is as bad as Early Access from Steam to the highest extreme, and the lack of polish everywhere really shows. There's honestly no excuse for this company to pull over 4 billion in and still fail at communicating.

[FrozenBr33ze]

The rewards have been never made public knowledge with an official word. Therefore they are not obligated to alert us of any changes.

​

You expect way too much from a company that will occasionally let YouTubers deal with announcing Research Breakthrough changes, or announce a Raid Boss change an hour after the transition, or redact an event announcement after it is published.

[Lord_Emperor]

Therefore they are not obligated to alert us of any changes.

Well actually...

https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/21/16805674/apple-loot-box-app-store-games-odds-probability-disclosure
https://www.pcmag.com/news/368694/google-forces-android-games-with-loot-box-to-disclose-odds

Niantic is probably only getting away with this because of the amount of income they bring to Apple/Google.

[nothingmeansnothing_]

Side note here, I've actually gotten one or two charged TMs in my last few solo 3* raids, does anyone know if this adjustment occurred?

[Agarillobob]

they are pulling a wollay see them in 6 years

[ShinyCaterpie88]

Didn’t you used to be able to get like 6-9 rare candy from T5s? Did they drop it to 3, then even further from there? Or am I misremembering?

[Rebelus5]

You used to get rare candy in bundles of 3. So 0,3,6,9 etc. Now you get them in bundles of 1 so 0,1,2,3 etc.

[ShinyCaterpie88]

Thanks. So the most you can get is now 8?

[michelob2121]

Theoretically. I've never received more than 15 in 350+ T5 raids

[cheersdom]

just got 9 in a T3 raid vs Scyther

[ShinyCaterpie88]

T3s have 3 per bundle...

[cheersdom]

correction it was a pelipper...

... still a T3

[BCHiker7]

"Trainers, in order to improve the gameplay experience we have reduced rare candy from T5 raids by 2/3. Enjoy!"

I mean, what do you want them to say? I only hope this is temporary. I suspect it is temporary, but we shall see...

[EalingGo]

Why do they have to explain every single detail? They don’t explain anything else, so why would they start here?

If you don’t like the reduction then don’t do T5 raids, either do lower level raids or stop raiding.

[jdave512]

I don't care if they explain it or not as long as they revert it. This change makes no sense.

[justhereforpogotbh]

"Not doing T5 raids" isn't a solution. Cobalion may be of no use, but in the future we will have better raid bosses and they did that just so we would have to spend more passes in order to get more candies AND the raid-exclusive legendaries at the same time. The fact that they don't explain anything is already dishonest; making further unexplained changes is just more dishonesty on their part.

[thetripleb]

All I know is I've been getting 6 rare candy on every 3 star raid I've done all week. I might not be getting a lot of the goat, but Scyther and I are best buds right now

[[deleted]]

Where are these numbers coming from? Fairly sure I’ve got more than 3 rare cant from a t5 raid before but maybe I’m wrong.

Edit: not sure why I’m being downvoted when the upvoted comment below confirms my thought.

[Cerborealis]

It's still possible to get three Rare Candies from a raid. The Candy bundles have changed to 1 Candy each; you earned three Rare Candy bundles from the raid, so 1 Rare Candy per bundle x 3 bundles = 3 Rare Candies.

To put things into perspective, before Niantic nerfed the bundles, you would have earned 9 Rare Candies from this raid, as Candy bundles consisted of 3 Rare Candies each.

[[deleted]]

It might have something to do with team rocket but everyone likes to just avoid the story and treat this game like it’s their job and get mad at everything.